(From Vas Myers, 31, second-generation member of the Family International)

I’m very happy to be in The Family and have never suffered any injustice or abuse of any kind. While life for anybody in this world has its ups and downs, living the Christian lifestyle within The Family and learning about our unique beliefs has helped me to maximize the ups and minimize the downs as well as learn how to make the most out of the downs. I also am extremely fond of the superior care my children get as there is a high emphasis placed on them and their education, health, and recreation. I feel very free to speak up and voice my opinion about any situation. My concerns have always been taken very seriously.

One big reason I am a missionary in the Family is because of the satisfaction it brings me and the meaning I get out of life. It makes it easier to see clearly the true values that get so lost when trying on your own to uphold ideals in the world today. I like the strength I get by working side by side with others who believe the way I do and have the same goals.

My wife and I were talking the other day about how nice it is to be able to travel anywhere in the world and any Family home you stay in you can sleep well knowing that nothing bad will happen to you or your children. The organizational side of things in the Family is also getting better and better which will definitely help us be more productive in our endeavors to reach as many as we can with the love of Jesus. The structural guidelines are also very thorough insuring that our principals are upheld. All that to say someone who based their knowledge about the Family purely on what they saw in the news would no doubt have a different picture– a very inaccurate one.

It seems obvious that each TV network and newspaper is generally worried about one thing, a good story. It has become almost accepted that in this world in order to succeed one must seek their own interests above all, even if it means twisting a sound bite of information to make things more interesting, or heavily slanting an interview to score more readers. The Bible tells us that we will have to give account for every idle word that we have spoken. I’d like to bypass corporate exteriors and ask the real people in these networks if they are at all concerned about accuracy. Do they know that when life is over they will have to answer for these articles and news programs in which they went for sensationalism and sacrificed the truth? In fact these decisions will most likely also catch up with them sooner than they think. Not everyone believes in the afterlife but it is obvious that what goes around comes around. You can say “chance” but it is my belief that there are really no atheists, and just as any truly intelligent person has to admit there is a God, they will also admit that the truth is usually quite different then what you see on TV.

As far as our former member apostates, and the tales they tell of abuse, I am just so surprised at the fact that they haphazardly say what they say. I wish they would put the energy they’re using to try and hurt us toward helping others, then they’d probably feel a lot better. It seems to me the problem that these former members have is not that they were abused but rather that they failed to govern their actions themselves, and when someone tried to help them they couldn’t handle the authority and held the counsel they were given against those who had them in their best interest. It would have benefited them more to be satisfied admitting that they didn’t like even the smallest amount of being told what to do and moved on with their lives in a different lifestyle less likely to subject them to taking advice from others. In the end their decision was to spend all their time trying to convince everyone that they were unfairly treated and the more they broadcasted their woes, the more they accumulated exaggerations and half truths, omitting key information to make their story more dramatic and the out-of-proportioned frustration (saying it mildly), excusable. Some of these people were my friends; I loved them and shared many times of happiness with them. I deeply cared about them and still do. It breaks my heart to see them waste their lives away. At the same time it gets my goat that they would accuse The Family like they do. I do not think that I am beyond these same wrong decisions and can also let myself be driven to the same immense amount of anger if I let the discomforts that come with life get to me to the point of thinking that out of the six billion people on earth I somehow deserve to skip the obstacle course laid out for the entire human race.

I am fully convinced that what I am a part of is the best way I can be a disciple of Jesus and will caution those who think otherwise for me, that they wouldn’t try to stop a work that is of God. If it’s not Of God it will end – if it is then no one can stop it.

Vas Myers is a second-generation member of The Family International